SetACL facts for kids

SetACL is a special computer program that helps you manage who can do what on your Microsoft Windows computer. Think of it like a security guard for your computer's files, folders, and settings. It's a freeware program, which means you can use it for free!

SetACL helps you control "permissions." Permissions are rules that say who can open, change, or delete files and folders. For example, you might want only certain people to be able to change an important document. SetACL lets you set up these rules easily.

What Can SetACL Do?

SetACL is a powerful tool with many helpful features. It helps you manage access to different parts of your computer.

Controlling Access to Files and Settings

SetACL can manage permissions for many things on your computer, including:

• Your computer's files and folders.
• Special computer settings called registry keys.
• Printers connected to your computer.
• Programs that run in the background, known as services.
• Files or folders that you share with others on a network.
• Advanced computer information called WMI objects.

Managing Permissions for Users

• You can set rules for people using your computer, whether they are on your own computer or on other computers in a network group.
• It lets you set many rules for different users or groups of users all at once. This saves you a lot of time!
• You can control how rules are passed down from a main folder to all the files inside it. This is called "inheritance."
• SetACL can show you all the current rules, save them as a backup, and even put them back if something goes wrong.
• You can make any user or group the "owner" of a file or folder. The owner usually has full control.

How SetACL Works Quickly

• SetACL is very fast! It does the hard work only once, even when dealing with many files.
• You can tell SetACL to ignore certain files or folders if you don't want to change their rules.

How Do You Use SetACL?

SetACL is a command-line tool. This means you type commands into a special window to tell it what to do. Here are a couple of examples:

Giving Permission to a Folder

Imagine you have a folder named "C:\angela" and you want a user named "brian" to be able to change files inside it. You would type a command like this: SetACL.exe -on "C:\angela" -ot file -actn ace -ace "n:dom1\brian;p:change"

Changing Permissions for Your Desktop

Let's say you want to remove "write" and "change" permissions from your Desktop folder and only allow "read and execute" permissions. You would use a command similar to this: SetACL.exe -on "\\mycomputer\C$\Documents and Settings\username\Desktop" -ot file -actn ace -ace "n:mycomputer\username;p:write,change;m:revoke" -ace "n:mycomputer\username;p:read_ex"

You can find more examples of how to use SetACL, for instance, with programs like AutoIt, by looking online.

A Quick Look at SetACL's History

SetACL has been around for a while, getting better over time:

• March 2001: The first versions of SetACL (0.x) started being developed.
• December 2002: Work began on the 2.x versions of the program.
• April 2003: The first test version of 2.0 was released.
• July 2003: The final version of SetACL 2.0 came out.
• September 2003: Version 2.0.1.0 was released. It added a feature to easily remove or change all rules for users from a specific network group.
• January 2004: Version 2.0.2 added ActiveX support. This meant other programming languages like AutoIt, Visual Basic, and Perl could use SetACL.
• May 2008: Version 2.0.3 was released, adding support for 64-bit computers.
• August 2010: Version 2.1 came out with better ways to list all the permissions.